London Olympic organizers try to satisfy badminton and rhythmic gymnastics on venue change

London working to finalize last 2 Olympic venues

LONDON — London Olympic organizers are working to reduce the travel time for athletes in the two sports whose venue for the 2012 Games is being changed to save money.

Paul Deighton, chief executive of London organizing committee LOCOG, said Tuesday he is confident a solution will be finalized by the end of the year for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics.

The committee has proposed moving the two sports to Wembley Arena — adjacent to Wembley Stadium on the northern outskirts of London — rather than build a temporary venue near the main Olympic Park complex in east London.

The two international federations have to sign off on the change.

Deighton says the sport officials are “perfectly happy” with the Wembley venue but are concerned by the extra travel time.

Scrapping the temporary venue in east London would save organizers about $33 million.

“In this economic environment it’s not really acceptable to taxpayers to build a temporary venue when you’ve already got an acceptable one, if the tradeoff is another 20 minutes’ travel time,” Deighton told reporters at the Sports Event Management Conference in London.

Deighton said organizers recently took representatives of the two sports to Wembley Arena from the athletes’ village site, and the journey took 42 minutes. He said that travel time is acceptable under the IOC’s technical guidelines.

“They look at one hour as the break even before you need to put the athletes closer to the venue,” he said. “So it’s clearly comfortably doable within what’s technically acceptable. Of course, it is further than it would have been initially.”

On other issues, Deighton said organizers hope to bring in $670 million in revenue by selling about 9 million tickets for the London Olympics and Paralympics. Tickets will go on sale in 2011.

London has already raised about $920 million in domestic sponsorship out of its target of $1.1 billion, which Deighton described as a “gravity defying” achievement during the economic downturn.

London is still working on plans to ensure full venues in 2012 and avoid the problem of empty seats that occurred in Beijing in 2008. Deighton said plans involve selling tickets to “people who really want to be there.”

He also mentioned making sure competition session lengths are “sensible” and using a Wimbledon-style “recycling” system where spectators can give their tickets to fans waiting outside when they leave the venue.